And yes, as in the cartoon, the little that is said carries a great load of meaning, emotion, history, desire.

Paul tests fangs for his upcoming play

All those of you who, like me, are working on vampire plays may appreciate a short list of the books I’ve found useful among many that were not:

Despite its garish cover, Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s Encyclopaedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters (Visionary Living, 2005) has a beautiful six-page bibliography and is written in matter-of-fact prose, with photos that are excellent and well chosen. It’s almost scholarly.

Mark Collins Jenkins’ Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend (National Geographic Society, 2010) offers a breezy narrative style along the lines of the Discovery Channel’s tomb-raiding specials, yet manages to convey a wealthy of information, with good endnotes. Its thesis about the origins of vampire legends takes awhile to unfold but strikes me as persuasive: it all had to do with the clash of ancient pagan cultures with newfangled Christian ones, and a general lack of information about putrefaction.

Studying the topic was much more fun than I had expected, partly because history gets absorbed in myth and myth in history; if anything it was too absorbing, so different from quotidian life that I found it tough to emerge into the sunlight every few hours. I’ve drafted “Rainbow Round the Moon,” a vampire coming-of-age play that I find touching and serious, though it remains to be seen if others will. Stay tuned.

My favorite play in the set was (a) Wanda’s Visit, which afforded lots of scope for the physical comedy of (b) my favorite actor of the evening, PJ Maske.

Catch PJ Maske at Bare Theatre’s “Durang/Durang”–quick!

Maske has many looks, and one of them reminds me of Anne Dudek, whom you may remember from the House television series, but she’s more–how do you say–three dimensional. Her body moves in space like that of a dancer (which, I subsequently discovered, she is). She has a small but impressive international presence, and I’m going to keep an eye on her.

She would have just the right edge where sexy meets get-out-of-my-way to play Melody Hunter in The Whistler someday, and I’d also love to see her as the cunning and disingenuous Gina Degringolade in my little The Next Big Thing, which has yet to be staged.

What dragon?

Which got me to thinking about all the feedback I’m getting about how my play The Whistler could be a portal into the interesting historical moment that serves as its setting. Zora Neale Hurston noted that “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”  And that’s why I chose 1965 for my setting: it was a question year.

So I’m thinking about preparing a page or two with links to the many allusions in the play, maybe some mini-articles, maybe space for users to add material too. I mean there’s the Voting Rights Act, the Andy Griffith Show, the Viet Nam “police action,” and plenty of cool material from newspapers and books I read in my background research–on jazz, on the civil rights movement, on growing up Black.  I like the idea of history as an on-ramp for art, and vice versa. Me, I take my interlocutors wherever I find ‘em!

Shylock and Antonio square off for the media

The show, which runs through June 3rd in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, was one of the best Merchants I’ve seen, though I recall some very good ones from the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Globe, the Folger.  A couple roles here were downright memorable.

I found Kelly Mengelkoch as Portia quite convincing as a comic character, especially the nonverbal interplay in which she engages  her maid. Yet her excellent comic sense may undermine the quality-of-mercy scene, where we can never quite take her seriously or, consequently, believe that Antonio is in  much jeopardy. The real gem here is Brian Isaac Phillips’ Shylock, whose backstory emerges in a framing device: at the opening he places a stone on the grave of his Leah, the departed wife and mother, and at the end, having been forced to convert to Christianity by the very men who spat at him for being a Jew, he has to hand a stone through the bars of the gate to the Jewish cemetery to Tubal to be placed on that same grave on his behalf–and Tubal spits on him.  Thus what happens in between–all the vitriol he spews, all his “extreme cruelty,” as the title page of the first folio has it–while losing none of its ugly force, is rendered much deeper by our understanding him as human, broken, conditioned. It takes the “I am a Jew” speech a step further: perhaps his piety is real, or at the very least his twistedness is related to his being a man of sorrows. Framing device aside, Phillips brings a sadness to the anger that gives you pause and may even make you ache.

The company took the (for them) unusual step of producing this play in Renaissance garb: no Fascist brownshirts, no Hawiaan muu-muus, no Goths. And they honor the text, a habit which, though not unheard of in the annals of  Shakespeare performance, is apt to warm the cockles of a playwright’s heart.

Wow. I hope to see other productions if I’m able to return to Cincinnati in the future.

I’ve not met Tony yet, but I hear that he’s a natural storyteller, and as the only person in the cast who was a grownup when the events of the play unfold in 1965, he can speak with authority and has added a great deal of depth.  I am very excited to welcome him, virtually!

I thought about his observation that limitation frees creativity last weekend after receiving a call from my Cincinnati co-producer of The Whistler, Carol Brammer of the Clifton Performance Theatre. The actors had convened on a Thursday night for a first full table reading, and had agreed that the script as presented was untenable. Not too surprising for a new, un-workshopped play, but a disagreeable conclusion to hear if you’re the playwright. Once my ego recovered, I was thrilled to realize that I had just heard specific, useable advice: eight people with decades of combined theatrical experience had actually read my play so closely and sympathetically that they could advise me on just where to insert the scalpel. Conveniently, the advice came in notes from a ten-minute phone call so it wasn’t so exhaustive or so specific that the constraints it imposed were irritating. Instead they liberated me: to cut several scenes from a two-hour and fifteen minute juggernaut; to simplify music cues; and to rewrite an ending that has troubled every reader of the piece since its inception. And precisely because I have lived with my six characters and their narrative for three long years, I was able to do it in a single weekend. I sacrificed some of the play’s charm but none of its beauty.

Mind you, I haven’t heard anything back yet. The director’s incommunicado till Friday, and Carol’s busily helping him re-cast an important role (more on this later). But this is what I asked for, what my Arts Council playwrighting fellowship was meant to foster: the collaboration is up and running. It’s already a better play.

Oh, and what’s the central metaphor for this production? Why, my friend, that’s a question for the director, and to get an answer you will have to come see the play first.

Michael Bath will play Henry Hunter in The Whistler

With roots in comedy and improv, Michael Bath has done plenty of heavy roles as well.   Cincinnati’s CityBeat Entertainment Awards for 2010, for example, cited his portrayal of Roy Cohn in Angels in America. And now he will play the role of Henry Hunter in The Whistler.  I got to meet Michael last week when I was in town to see the theater and talk with production staff; he helped audition a youngster for the teenage role of Robin, and he’s going to rock the house. I feel lucky to be working with him.

More here.

While the fundraising campaign has been slow to get off the ground, I’m confident in the arts community and friends, with some of whom I already have confabulations in the works when I return home. Tim has done a fine job reaching out to his own network in Ohio and beyond; we’ll make it.

Meanwhile I’ve submitted the script for consideration in the 2012-2013 season at a small but prominent North Carolina theater. Won’t it be sweet to see it on my home turf one day!